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Any liberals or Democrats who are patting themselves on the back for their protests and their resistance for causing Trump and Ryan’s healthcare plan to fail need to shut the fuck up and realize that they had fuck all to do with it.

Trump and Ryan’s healthcare legislation failed because there were around 30 men who were too conservative on the issue—so conservative that many fellow Republicans couldn’t support what they wanted. The bill was impossible to pass. If Trump/Ryan caved to these ultra-conservative jackalopes, they would have lost the votes they needed from the more moderate conservative jackalopes. Read about it here in pretty serious detail. So they tried to strong-arm the ultra conservatives into caving, and those jackalopes told Trump and Ryan to go kick rocks.

This rift in the Republican Party is what killed the bill. This is a purely self-inflicted wound.

You think any of those assholes gave a shit that people knitted hats and showed up by the millions to protest a pussy grabbing piece of human shit? No. They killed the bill because some men are so committed to eliminating government spending that they honestly don’t mind killing tens of thousands of American citizens.

If I wanted to be charitable, I’d say that the protests and the resistance and all that made it impossible for the moderate Republicans to go all-in with the additional cuts. But, that charitable characterization is wrong when you consider the fact that those moderate Republicans were still behind the bill even though it only had a 17% approval rating from Americans. At the same time, 56% of Americans disapproved of it. These fucking moderate animals were prepared to vote for a bill that was 40 points below water! And you want me to believe that the reason they were going to walk if the ultra-conservatives got what they wanted was because it would be too unpopular? Sorry. I’m not buying it. That shit doesn’t make any sense if they were willing to vote for something that was already really unpopular.

So yeah. I was at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. I marched to Trump Tower. I showed up to JFK and waited until the place flooded with more police than demonstrators. My time wasn’t a waste, and if another demonstration like those shapes up, I’ll go again. But I’m not under any illusion that what I did led to the death of this bill. The people who killed this bill do not care about me. They don’t really care about anyone. That’s what killed it.

I made my first blog post in years today, and I tried to keep it concise. I didn’t succeed like I’d wanted, so I’d like to try again, but this time with an object lesson. (The other one is here.)

Here it goes:

Trump won because white people don’t want to hear what people of color have to say. Like at all. And they voted for the guy who they thought would tell any complaining brown person to shut the fuck up. And they got the right guy.

Trump voters have been expecting silence from minority communities over the last several years. And they haven’t gotten it. Now that they have their man, they’re demanding it. And they’re doing so rather transparently.

This is best exemplified by the reaction of many Trump supporters to what the cast of Hamilton decided to say to Mike Pence. Before we get to just how unhinged and deranged the reaction is, let’s examine the text of the statement:

Vice-president elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We really do.

We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.

But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf all of us. All of us.

We truly thank you for sharing this show—this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.

It should be noted that just before this statement was read, the person reading it quieted the crowd and stopped them from booing Pence. The person was genuinely reaching out to Pence. Then, after reading it, I can come to no other conclusion other than that this statement is the most respectfulstatement anyone has made this entire campaign.

Thanks for coming, Mr. Pence!

We’re afraid.

We hope our performance made you less likely to hurt us.

Thanks again for coming!

You cannot more respectfully make a point than that. It is torturously respectful. It goes out of its way to show respect.

And Trump supporters are calling it disrespectful and demanding apologies.

(I’m going to ignore for a moment that people who voted for and support Donald Trump think someone should be respectful to someone else. That is, in a phrase, bat-shit fucking insane, and it should make you question your ability to form opinions. About anything. And I mean anything. Like including your favorite color. Or shape. Or even flavor of ice cream. If you vote for Trump and then complain about a lack of respect, seriously, go fuck yourself with a branding iron.)

A person of color cannot stand on a stage and express fear without being shouted at and told to shut up. That’s what’s happening right now.

Trump supporters: YOU’RE PROVING THE MAN’S POINT FOR HIM.

Why on earth would brown people and minorities feel like Trump won’t protect them? Because a brown person cannot say, “I feel afraid,” without being yelled at and told to shut up.* That’s why they feel like Trump won’t protect them. And that’s why overwhelming numbers of white voters elected him: to send a message of “get fucked” to people who are already feeling under attack.

And if you think Trump is going to heal that? No no. He’s not even interested in healing it. If there’s a problem, it’s not the problems articulated by brown people. Those aren’t problems. The problem is that brown people are articulating their feelings. Still. Even after the election. THAT is what needs to stop, in the mind of a Trump supporter.

It’s going to get worse. A lot worse. This is a beginning of something terrible.

Make sure you’re on the right side of it.

(And if you’re not sure what side you’re on, the right side or the wrong side, the right side is ALWAYS the side defending the powerless against the powerful. Always.)

*What’s interesting to me is how the conversations I’ve been having regarding this have gone. First, it’s “disrespectful.” Then, when confronted with how it is clearly actually respectful, they pivot to some other point about not wanting to hear it for some asinine reason.

The reason they don’t want to hear it is simple: they have no respect for the person who is saying it. This isn’t hard, people. It’s only hard to listen if you don’t fucking want to. And that’s the point. They don’t want to hear it. At all.

It’s gotten to the point where whenever I see the term “politically correct,” I kind of just read it or hear it as “educated.” It’s a really handy tool. Here’s an example.

Someone says, “Things are too politically correct these days.” All I see is, “Things are too educated these days.” See how simple that makes it?

When people complain about things being politically correct, they’re complaining about the nuances of what it’s like to be living in a modern society. They yearn for the days when they could just talk about people as being “wetbacks.” Like Republican Don Young did recently. Young can’t be bothered to learn or understand how terms like “wetback” or “spic” are actually harmful to certain communities—until it threatens their political careers. Then they learn really quickly what other people have learned steadily over the last 50 years:

Language has a force to it, and using it to denigrate entire communities has real world, legitimate social effects. Every time we use words like “wetback” or “spic,” it reinforces the notion that there are “real Americans” with names like Young and “fake” Americans with names like Rodriguez or Gonzales.

This isn’t “political correctness.” It’s education and understanding, and it applies to just about every situation where groups of people are being targeted as homogenous entities. The kind of people who want to lazily talk about “the blacks,” or “Muslims,” or “the gays” as singular groups are the same kind of people who complain about things being “politically correct.” They can’t be bothered to understand the complexities of today’s America, especially the complexities of what it’s like to not be in the majority. And so they lament how other people are forcing them to confront the fact that saying things like “the blacks whatever just need to work harder, then they’ll succeed” has been and continues to be an incredibly stupid way of looking at how a society works. It’s not that simple now, and it never has been.

“There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.” – Abraham Lincoln

But those things aren’t okay to say anymore, and it’s not because they’re politically incorrect: it’s because they’re staggeringly ignorant and ignore the real inequality that so many people in this country face on an everyday basis.

So, after a long nightmare of having Time Warner cable service, I had finally had enough of channels disappearing, garbled audio, and staticky picture on channels as simple as ABC. I swear to you, and I am not exaggerating, I called Time Warner’s customer service line more often than I called anyone else. It was ALWAYS at the top of my recent calls. They are simply the worst. I don’t know why I toughed it out for so long because I barely watch television, but I did.

But that’s all over now. I canceled the service. Good riddance. I hate them with the power of about a third of the sun.

So, I was left with two choices:

Have no cable television whatsoever and save money.

Get DirecTV.

I was leaning heavily towards having no cable. I’d done it before for around two years. The only drag is not being able to watch live sports on ESPN or SNY or YES or MSG. Was it really worth it to pay for cable just so I can watch something as silly and meaningless as sports?

Well, when you add DirecTV’s Sunday ticket, for free, hell yeah it’s worth it. For signing up for two years, I got a year of Sunday ticket free. Awesome.

So I go online and set up an installation. I only realized afterwards that this might be a problem. My landlord has been renovating both the interior and exterior of the building for about the last three months. It’s endless. Every morning I wake up to the sound of hammers and saws cutting through something. Only now, though, has the exterior of the house finally come close to completion. And now, with DirecTV, I had to ask my landlord if it would be okay for me to bolt a giant dish to his house.

This is kind of what the back of the house looks like now.

It didn’t go well.

He wanted nothing to do with it being on the house. He didn’t mind it being somewhere else, but on the house he just spent months renovating? I completely understood his position, and figured, “Screw it. I don’t need cable.” I called DirecTV to cancel. They told me not to worry about it and let the technician come and see what he could do. My landlord said to call him and ask before they did anything.

So the technician comes over and suggests putting it on the roof of the garage, which had not been renovated. All he and his partner would have to do is run a wire along existing phone wires. Perfect. But still, my landlord was resistant. He was against putting even a single new line into the house. I’m on the phone with him trying to explain how simple it would be, but he’s not having it. He’s Russian (a Russian Jew, and there are many Russian Jews in the area), and he speaks English much like many other Russian men speak English: he yells it. So, I’m standing there on the phone trying to reason with a man who’s yelling at me, and the technician and his partner are just waiting with their hands on their hips. Eventually, my landlord is tired of yelling English at me, and he asks to talk to the technician.

I hand over the phone, the technician says exactly what I said, and after a minute, we have clearance to put one single hole into the house. Awesome.

I get back on the phone with my landlord and he says to me, “Is he a black guy?”

I was NOT expecting that question, but I answered truthfully, “Um… yeah. Yes he is.”

“See, black guys they don’t care about the work. He’s going to make a mess. I don’t need him putting four holes in my house. You need to watch him and make sure he doesn’t mess anything up.”

I started to laugh at how fantastically racist all that was, but I was a little worried about my own part in this process. I don’t need the blame if this guy makes a mistake. I say, “How am I supposed to make sure he doesn’t make a mistake? Once he makes the mistake, he makes it. I can’t unmake it.”

“Just watch him. Make sure he doesn’t drill like four holes in the house.”

“Um, okay. I’ll do what I can.” Which was literally nothing.

So, I hang up and walk up to the technician. What do I say? Well, I tell him exactly what my landlord said, about the whole black guys doing bad work, and explained that this was probably why he was giving us such a hard time. The look on the guy’s face was perfect. It was a great blend of “WTF” and “Oh, now it makes sense, I’ve gotten this dozens of times before.” I start laughing and just shrug my shoulders, and he shakes his head. We start walking back into the house, and he asks me, “Well what the hell is he? Pakistani or something?”

“Nah, man. He’s a Russian Jew.”

“Oh a Jew? They’re the worst. That explains it. I don’t know why they’re so mad at us. Black people didn’t do nothing to them. They need to be mad at the Muslims. They’re the ones trying to kill them.”

Wonderful. I just stand there laughing, enjoying the beautiful racism these gentlemen are throwing around. It’s really interesting to watch it be exposed like that. It’s not often you get to see it that honest, that removed from political correctness. It’s like seeing a deer in the wild. You know they’re in the woods, but you don’t see them all that often. When you do, you just kind of have to slow down and take in the moment.

So, the technician motions to his partner and he asks if he heard what I said. The partner is dark-skinned, definitely some kind of Indian/Arabic lineage (I didn’t ask him to specify). I told him what my landlord said and the guy, with a face which would have been expressionless were it not for an ever-so-slight angry sneer, just shook his head and said, “He’s lucky he’s not here right now.”

Yikes.

Ah. Now I know what Towers you’re talking about.

Then he tells me a story about how earlier in the day, he was installing something for some white lady. He was outside of her window running some wires, and he overhears part of the woman’s conversation with another man in the house. He heard the woman say something to the effect of, “down the towers.” He only caught part of it. The man she was speaking to said, “The towers? What towers are you talking about?” The lady answered that question by simply pointing at the Indian/Arabic guy working to make sure she can watch Cupcake Wars. Oh, those Towers. Right.

I ask the guy, “Really? That’s insane. It was that obvious?”

“Yeah. But, what can I do? If I confront the lady or say anything back, she could complain and I could lose my job. I couldn’t really do anything.”

“Wow. That is just awful.”

With that, the three of us fell into an awkward silence. Not much else could have been said. The technician told me where he was going to run the wires, and I asked him how he was going to do it. He started to explain, and now I have DirecTV. It’s awesome.

Watch as the president, for the second time in his term in office, is interrupted in the middle of giving a speech like no other president has ever been interrupted before.

Joe Wilson, who has the self control of a small child.

First it was Joe Wilson (R-SC) who screamed, “YOU LIE!” at Obama during Obama’s State of the Union address. That had never happened in the recorded history of this country. And, it wasn’t like those “Code Pink” idiots who interrupt Republican politicians during speeches. Let me repeat: Code Pink are a bunch of assholes for the way they go about getting their message into the media. Those are extreme activists. They’re a part of a vast, unsupported minority.

But, when Obama was interrupted during his SotU, that was a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives screaming at the president. It wasn’t some fringe group. It was an officially elected member of the Republican establishment. Sure, he apologized afterwards, but then he went and raised money off of what he did. He raised money off of his disrespect for the president. That’s how sorry he really was.

And now, a few years later, we have another first. Another time the president is interrupted in the middle of a speech. This time, it wasn’t a member of Congress, but it also wasn’t a member of Code Pink or the Tea Party or PETA. It was a “professional reporter” for the hyper-conservative blog “The Daily Caller.” His name is Neil Munro, and he is a professional member of the conservative media. He gets paid to report things that conservatives want to be told. He was given a pass to have the ability to cover the president’s speech, and he used that privilege to disrespect the president by interrupting him mid-speech, just like Joe Wilson did.

Neil Munro, who is as professional as a waiter sneezing into your dinner. Photo outright stolen from NPR.

Whether or not Wilson or Munro are factually correct in their assertions is irrelevant. They may be, but as a politician and a media member respectively, they have to know that the way to disagree is not to be disrespectful. But they seemingly don’t think this president is deserving of the same kind of respect the last 43 presidents have received (I wonder what’s different about this one…?) This is pure disrespect, and it’s not coming from extremist groups who hold up signs at rallies of less than a hundred people. It’s not coming from idiots on Twitter who aren’t educated or civilized enough to form a coherent thought.* It’s coming directly from the conservative establishment. It’s coming directly from the people who are professional representatives of conservatism.

And conservatives have the gall to claim that it is the president who is dividing the country? It’s the elected representatives and the paid professionals of the “right” who are setting the example for inappropriate and disrespectful behavior.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Mark Levin do nothing but trash the president all day on their radio shows. And you know what? That’s fine. That’s fair game. But, it also sets the stage for these kinds of outbursts which have heretofore not been seen in American politics. One side of the argument is dragging the American media and politics further into the gutter, and it’s people like Joe Wilson and Neil Munro.

Update: Munro and the Daily Caller have published their reaction, and needless to say, it’s laughable. From Munro: ““I always go to the White House prepared with questions for our president. I timed the question believing the president was closing his remarks, because naturally I have no intention of interrupting the President of the United States.”

Watch that video again. There is no way you think Obama is finished, especially given the way Obama speaks. He constantly pauses for effect (and likely to gather his thoughts). And even if he did think Obama was finished, Munro interrupted consistently afterwards. It wasn’t a one time, “Oops, thought you were done. Sorry,” kind of interaction. It was a repeated interruption, so much so that Obama had to remind Munro once that it wasn’t time for questions, and then AGAIN that it wasn’t time for an argument in the middle of the president’s speech. To say he had no intention of interrupting the president is laughable, to say the least.

Then there’s Tucker Carlson’s point about Sam Donaldson and Ronald Reagan. Watch the difference here.

Tucker Carlson, muppet.

Reagan was CLEARLY done. How do we know? Because he said he was going to let someone else (AG Meese) take the podium. That’s what people do when they’ve finished with their remarks. Compare that to Obama, who had simply paused for a moment. For Carlson to even attempt to create an equivalency here is preposterous. Rather than own their mistake and apologize, they’ll double down on it. Why? Because the conservative media has created such a toxic atmosphere for this president that they know they’ll be able to make more money out of insulting him than being respectful. And insulting him to his face? Even better. Pretty soon, just like Joe Wilson, they’ll be selling t-shirts and raising cash. Just pathetic.

Johan Santana celebrates after his no hitter. Straight up stolen from the AP.

I’ve always thought “Flushing” was a stupid name for a city. We associate the word mostly with toilets.

Terrible.

I was reminded of it last night as I watched Johan Santana throw the first no hitter in New York Mets history. In watching and reading the coverage from several media outlets across the nation, I saw many of them refer to the events happening in Flushing, and every time they said it, I remembered myself as an eight year old kid. When my dad told me the Mets played in Flushing, I was perplexed. “There’s a town called ‘Flushing.’ And the Mets play there? Gross.” I kind of felt like the rest of baseball has always silently snickered about how the Mets play in Flushing, referring to Shea Stadium as a toilet.

So why the hell is that town called Flushing?

Turns out that the area was originally named Vlissingen by the Dutch when they settled in what is now New York City. Vlissingen is also the name of an existing town in the Netherlands which has been around since 1315. All the way back in the 1600’s, the English started referring to that Dutch town as something more Anglo: “Flussingue.” That eventually became “Flushing.” So, after the British took over the New Netherlands colony, the New World Vlissingen simply became Flushing around the end of the 17th century.

All this happened a few hundred years before flushable toilets in homes became popular. The phrase “flush the toilet” was nearly non-existent in English writing until the 20th century. Here’s the Google Ngram picture for the phrase.

“Flush the toilet” historically.

So, you know, the name of Flushing, Queens where my New York Mets play has NOTHING to do with toilets. Not even close. I feel way better about the name now. My inner, snickering eight year old has been somewhat pacified.

*Most of the information about the historical aspects of Flushing and Dutch/English occupation was culled from Wikipedia, so I generalized it to make sure it didn’t really make a difference for the point I was trying to make. If I made any important mistake, feel free to point it out in the comments.

Not exactly the kind of growth we’ll need in order to keep the unemployment rate from rising again, but considering how Congress has done absolutely nothing to help businesses create jobs since last January, it could be much, much worse.

Since 1933, Augusta National Golf Club has been a place where rich men could get together and play golf. The Masters Tournament has been held at Augusta ever since 1934, and the two are virtually interchangeable. They are a brand. They have carefully orchestrated every single aspect of that brand for years. It’s always been an absolutely beautiful course, and that beauty has either been preserved or enhanced over the decades. When those iconic visuals are combined with its stature as the only location to see a “major” tournament every single year, Augusta National is not just a golf course: it’s a monolith. It’s the most famous and most revered and, in golf circles, most respected course or club in America—and likely the entire world.

And women are not allowed to be a part of it.

Millions and millions of Americans tune in every year to watch the Masters on television. The Masters and Augusta National are privatized and monetized; they make tens of millions of dollars a year. I looked into it, and the only thing I could find was this link from 2004 saying that the Masters generates $44m in revenue. I’m surprised even that number is public, as they are a private club with an incentive to keep such information hidden. They’re a for-profit, multimillion dollar business operating right here in America:

And women are not allowed to be a part of it.

It’s a classic “boy’s club.” They pick and choose who they would like to have in, and up until the 90’s, this excluded minorities. It’s a remnant of an American past where it was perfectly acceptable for a bunch of rich white men to get together and tell the women and the negroes to get the hell out.

As part of this historic tradition, each year the Masters bestows their iconic “green jackets” on the winner of the tournament as well as a few others they deem worthy. Well, who is more worthy than their corporate sponsor overlords? The CEOs of their corporate sponsors every year, historically 100% men, have also been given green jackets: a sign of acceptance and membership in the Augusta National Club.

So did that snag actually cause a change in policy and allow a woman to be treated equally alongside men?

Well, that’s not clear just yet. I guess we’ll have to wait for Sunday. (Update: they didn’t) Even though the tournament has already begun, The Masters and Augusta National will not comment on the issue. And, while their formerly racist (though former might not even be appropriate) and thoroughly sexist history has done more than enough to stain and tarnish the esteem of the Masters and Augusta National in the eyes of any thinking, egalitarian, and non-bigoted person, Augusta clings to their prejudice in the name of tradition.

A tradition of bigotry used as an excuse to continue its bigotry.

The voices speaking about this are simply too impotent to impact the situation. The only way it might change is if people stop watching and caring. And, since it’s the biggest tournament of the year, as long as golf is still popular in America and the world, this will continue. As long as people still watch on television, and as long as those corporate sponsorships still want to reach those millions, there’s no pressure which can be exerted.

Even back about 10 years ago when sponsors completely pulled their support, the Masters went ahead anyways commercial free. These guys have enough money to do it. And they have the dedication to their bigotry, as well.

And, let’s say that this year Augusta relents and allows Rometty to become a member, it would only be seen as being done solely for corporate ties. Changing their bigoted tradition over a few million dollars: how… appropriate? How… classy?

So, regardless of the outcome of this particular story, one thing will still be true:

Augusta and the Masters are a disgrace to American civil and social progress—a vestigial marking of historical American patriarchy.

“…this killing, overlaid with its possible racial motivations, strikes a chord with African-American athletes. They have been that kid in the hoodie, automatically judged as suspicious, and not that long ago. When they say that they are Trayvon, they mean exactly that.”